Swingers At Orlando Hotel Turn Families' Trip To `Las Vegas Strip'

January 4, 2006|By Terry O. Roen Orlando Sentinel

Soccer families and swingers do not mix.

Especially when the parents of adolescent soccer players checked their daughters into an Orlando hotel that was hosting a New Year's Eve Party for more than 200 self-described swingers, who had reserved a downstairs ballroom along with rooms on the ninth floor.

Parents who traveled from South Carolina and Clearwater to bring their 11- to 13-year-old daughters to a five-day soccer tournament said they were shocked by the parade of sexually adventurous partygoers who sashayed through the glass-enclosed atrium, sometimes flashing breasts and bare buttocks in front of the children.

They described the dress of some of the swingers at the Crowne Plaza Hotel-Airport in Orlando as "raunchy, despicable and worse than prostitutes."

"We thought we were coming to Orlando, not the Las Vegas Strip," said Mark Gilbert, the father of a 13-year-old who plays on the Clearwater Chargers, a group of 13-and-under players.

The teams booked the $92-a-night rooms for Disney's Soccer Showcase, sponsored by Disney Wide World of Sports, online from Anthony Travel. They said hotel management did not tell them about the swingers' party nor try to keep the uninhibited adults away from their children.

Hotel managers declined to comment Sunday and Monday.

However, several hotel employees, who spoke on the condition they not be identified, said about 200 swingers attended the New Year's Eve party Saturday night -- about half the number that attended a similar event a year earlier.

One employee said the party was advertised over a swinger Web site, and participants, some of whom engage in partner-swapping and voyeurism, came from across the United States.

"We're not prudes by any means," said Rob Young, of Greenville, S.C., who said his two daughters, Leah, 13, and Lauren, 11, were asking questions that were difficult to answer. "We would have liked to have been informed when we checked into the hotel so we could have made other arrangements."

Anthony Travel officials could not be reached for comment.

Walker Downs, 15, said he was walking through the lobby about 8 p.m. Saturday with his sister, Molly, 13 and two of her friends when he saw something he will never forget.

"Some lady pulled down her skirt to show a black thong with diamonds," said Walker, a 10th-grader at Mauldin High School in Mauldin, S.C. "It made me uncomfortable because I was there with my family."

Walker's mother, Julie Downs, a 43-year-old registered nurse, said her children asked why they were restricted to their rooms and couldn't party on New Year's Eve.

Paul Camporini brought his wife, seventh-grade daughter and eighth-grade son from Safety Harbor and said he had to "delicately explain to my Catholic schoolchildren that swingers change partners during the evening."

Camporini, 49, said his son initially did not want to travel to watch his sister play soccer but "thought it [the swingers' party] was downright hilarious."